


The Road Not Taken: Call & Response

by fadeverb



Series: In Nomine: the Company [9]
Category: In Nomine
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-12 11:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4478138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeverb/pseuds/fadeverb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Leo, Adrian, and Lanthano have to go rob Lightning, and this goes about as well as you would expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which I Am A Model Employee

It's a good thing I'm not a coffee fan anyway, because Stygian coffee barely tastes like it. The company offices import Shal-Mari beans that everyone assures me are the best you can get without paying for corporeal imports, but the only difference I can tell is the intensity of flavor.

I have bought two coffees, because that's how the bouncers let you keep the table in this coffee shop, and I don't intend to touch either of them. The second one's for Lanthano. From the way he's looking at it, I don't think he's interested in drinking the coffee they serve here either.

"I don't usually come to this cafe," Lanthano says, propping his chin on a hand. He extends a wing out towards the rest of the room. "How did you find it?"

"Process of elimination." I shove my cup to the edge of the table. "Trying to find a place in reasonable walking distance that doesn't have pit fights, dancing, or philosophers stabbing each other over terminology disputes takes a surprising amount of work."

Lanthano surveys the place. It's one of the cafes that's built into the rock, instead of a rickety multi-story unit, so it's all tables in niches and uneven hallway between them. You can't properly see anyone in another niche unless you're walking past it. The bouncers just shuffle through the center once in a while to make sure no one is camping a table without paying for a drink.

"There's that place on Third and Murder," he says.

"Loud music."

"Middle of Fourth, by the aquarium?"

"Political scientists stabbing each other."

"Only on Tuesdays and Thursdays," Lanthano says. "And...some Sundays. Though I think that might be the beat poet night?" He actually tries his coffee. "I can't keep the shivvings straight around here."

"Well, it's Sunday, and I wasn't going to take chances." I slouch back, trying to find a position that doesn't squash my wings against the cave wall. No luck so far. I'm out of practice with spending time in my celestial form, and all the Impudites around me make it look so effortlessly graceful. "You don't like it."

"I didn't say that."

"Mm, but you're asking after my choices, and every time you do that, it's because you're finding a nice way to guide someone away from a choice you wish they hadn't made."

Lanthano laughs. "Fair. It's just that...did you _know_ this was a Secrets bar?"

"No," I say, "and it's not a bar unless they serve alcohol."

"They do," Lanthano says. "They just don't put that on the board, so that you have to know the right password to ask for it."

I think about that, while what's going to be a Djinn or Shedite some day undulates past on a beverage check.

"Thematic," I conclude. "We can provide some of the colorful local patronage they need to keep up the pretense that it's actually a secret."

"We're not colorful," Lanthano points out. "We're both wearing black, except for the gray."

"Thieves are inherently colorful. Or are all those comics Yuliang keeps buying for me full of lies?"

"Yes," Lanthano says. "I hate to break it to you, but they are _completely_ full of lies." He has another sip of coffee, and makes a face. Someone forgot where we got that beverage. "I wonder why they don't do any adventure stories about Secrets."

"Can you imagine trying to write that? 'I have discovered the secret of this mystery! Now I'll go lock it in a box, and put the box inside another box, and hide the box inside a maze, and then hide the map of the maze inside another box inside a different maze.' Aaaand then the story is over." I pour coffee from my cup into his before the next beverage check comes by. It makes it look like we're both drinking, and makes for less squalor than pouring it out on the floor. "Do you think this would taste any better with rum in it?"

"With the kind of rum you can get in this place?" Lanthano takes a sacrificial gulp of coffee. "No."

"Do you know the secret password, so that we can try?"

"Yes," he says, "and no, we're not adding rum to this discussion. Not with that meeting this afternoon."

"I was trying not to think about that."

"It'll be fine," Lanthano lies. And for the sake of happy conversation over terrible coffee, I pretend to believe him.

#

"I'm so glad you've both decided there's a possibility of this job being completed efficiently, despite your presence." Adrian oozes over his side of the desk. I think this is the closest we'll get to congratulations for being at his office on time, fully prepared, for this damn meeting. "Is there much chance of that continuing?"

Lanthano huffs out a tiny sigh. That's outright criticism, coming from him and aimed at a Knight of the company. "I'm sure it'll be fine," he says. "Everyone here has North American experience."

"And theoretically," I add, "I'm Canadian."

Adrian narrows various eyes at me. He's a nasty mess, as are most Shedim, and it's hard to take viscera seriously when I'm not actually scared of the person displaying them. "Canadian paperwork doesn't count."

"Of course not," I say readily, with a nice bright smile, while Lanthano kicks me in the ankle.

Being relentlessly positive to Adrian makes him grind his teeth, at least in hosts. Can't see enough teeth on his celestial form to be sure if it works the same way in Hell, but I'm willing to put in the work to find out.

"Let us assume you read the attachments on the coordination email," Adrian says, as if he is assuming nothing of the sort. I would mind the constant insinuations (and occasional outright statements) regarding my competence, and lack thereof, a great deal less if he weren't aiming them at Lanthano as well. There is never a good reason to be an asshole to Lanthano; he's the closest you get to a nice person within Hell.

"With the standard level of vague," Lanthano says. "Is this a follow-up to the Seattle job, or a new project?"

"It's a follow-up to the Lightning project that got hit by the War," I say, "and I'm of the general opinion that it's a bad idea to touch any of that, but I'm not in charge of these things." I show my teeth to Adrian's expression. "What? I'm extrapolating. You can't send around a set of specs like that and tell me not to draw assumptions. Am I wrong?"

Lanthano props his chin on a hand, and stares at me directly. "That's a little spooky, Leo."

"Are you questioning the mission parameters?" Adrian asks.

"No, I'm offering informed commentary on them, based on having nearly been shot by _both_ sides of the war, the last time I touched this project. Presumably it'll go much more smoothly this time with you in charge."

"Seriously," Lanthano says. "How did you work that out?"

I find my phone, and dig up the message in question. And then need Lanthano's help figuring out how to open the attachment through the interface there. Computers are never my friend, but phones are even worse. Who wants a computer with a miserable little interface like that, even if you can carry it around? Adrian glowers at us, which is standard, but silently, which is a little worrisome. Maybe he's just working up something particularly scathing.

"Location," I say, once I have the briefing pulled up, such as it is. Lanthano's right about vague. The company loves its paperwork the way a sniper loves high buildings with lots of windows in them. This stuff isn't designed to allow for clarity if the wrong sort of person starts looking. "There's a Lightning Tether by that hydro dam, and no Tech Tether that I've heard of in miles, so of the two standard targets, that's narrowed down to a likely one. It's not that far northwest of where the last fiasco went down, so if I were sitting on tech like that and needed to relocate hastily, it'd be the most secure place I'd shift to, assuming subsequent development, which of course they're going to do, because they're Lightning and don't believe in respecting the laws of nature when they could accidentally set it on fire instead. And you don't send in the three of us for something simple involving human work in the area. One of you two, with backup? Sure. But not all three of us. We're hitting Lightning."

"Lightning has all sorts of projects," Lanthano says.

"One of which the company has a lot of interest in already, and is probably located there." I shove the phone back in my pocket. "Plus the mention of architectural surveillance. You don't need infiltration work, physically, if all you want is data. Not on that level. I'm not the tech guy, I'm the buildings guy. Three of us, that location, what other conclusion am I supposed to come to?"

"Occasionally employees are known to wait for data before leaping to wild conclusions," Adrian says.

I spread my hands wide. "Am I wrong? Because it does happen. Tell me I'm wrong."

I'm not wrong.

#

Inside the vault, Lanthano helps me sort through artifacts that might be useful, and tries to come up with a polite way to say _Maybe you should try not antagonizing him._ I have pity on him somewhere between the clothing racks and the case of small weapons, and say, "I can play nice with Adrian. Really."

Lanthano eyes me sidelong, and hands me a gun. "Try this one."

I flip the gun over in my hands. "Uses artifact bullets? Never worth it. At the point that we are shooting actual bullets at actual angels of Lightning, everything has gone so pear-shaped we might as well try to talk it out with them, because that'd have a better chance of working."

"Knives?"

"No artifact weaponry for this job. It's the wrong sort of job. Ditto on explosives, not that they make artifact explosives that I've ever noticed--talk about an unfilled niche--because then we start running into the 'accidentally killing humans' problem, which wouldn't make you happy." I shut the case, and head for the part of the vault where the miscellaneous stuff gets stored. Part of the wealth of a Marquis is her territory, and part of it is her employees, and part of it is having the leisure to hang onto several dozen weird artifacts at a time until someone happens to want to use one. "Check the index for anything involving stealth, lying, climbing, and..." I crouch down in front of an antique television set. "...what does _this_ do?"

Lanthano flips through the book by the door for a minute. "Hypnotism."

"Not very portable, is it."

"You should've seen the first artifact computer we ever bought."

"Took up a room?"

"And then some." Lanthano keeps paging through the index. "There should be a pair of sunglasses in there. Inside the wardrobe." He hesitates; it's a different kind of sound than just finishing a sentence and not having another one to follow.

"It's really not a problem." I flip open the wardrobe, which is _also_ an artifact, and locate the sunglasses beneath a feather boa. "Adrian is going to complain regardless, so I might as well do what's useful for the job. Do we have anything for being generally inconspicuous? Not standing out in a crowd. That kind of thing."

"Getting along with Adrian might help with the job," Lanthano says. "Hiding in shadows? Is that close enough?"

"Getting along with Adrian isn't possible, or Valentin wouldn't be as fucked up as they are. Skip the 'hiding in shadows' thing, I have a Song for that, and we do have a checkout limit."

"I don't see how that follows," Lanthano says.

I'm not enough of an asshole to pretend he means the checkout limit. "Never mind. My point is, if I thought that I could have a friendly working relationship with Adrian, I would try to achieve it." A broom tries to topple onto me, but I grab it before that can cause some sort of horrible artifact cascade. "I don't think it's possible, so I'm not going to spend any time or effort on a lost cause when I could be focusing on the job. What does this do?"

"It sweeps."

"Automatically?"

"No, it's just a broom. One of the souls must've left it in here after the annual cleanup." Lanthano takes the broom away to prop it by the door. "Adrian is...always difficult to deal with, but there are levels of difficult."

"Sure, but he doesn't like me. Personally. For reasons that are kinda obscure, so I figure that's his problem, not mine, right?" I head for the jewelry box; wearable is good, when it comes to artifacts. "He's the Knight, so he's the one responsible for project management. If he's not going to _manage_ , that's on him. Anything for climbing?"

"Not unless you want rocket boots," Lanthano says.

"That's not really climbing." I consider the possibility. "Noisy?"

"Aurally _and_ symphonically."

"Let's skip them." With some regret, because, you know. Rocket boots. I sift through handfuls of rings, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, most with powers so faint they're barely detectable. Lots of jewelry for seduction and charming, and a few I think are to help with actual Charming for Impudites. Pity that it's so hard to make that kind of stuff work against angels. Double pity that we're doing a subtle job, instead of a fast hit and run. I have a lot more options to work with when I don't have to worry about the fallout after I'm a few states away. Or provinces, as the case might be. "What do you think their generator situation is going to be like? On the one hand, Lightning. On the other hand, not a Tether itself. Unless we do end up having to hit the Tether, which would be all kinds of exciting."

"We don't do Tether work," Lanthano says. "Not on one that well-populated."

I can't argue with company policy. (Except in my own head, which doesn't count.) I spin a ring his way, and watch him snap it out of the air. We may be the oddest version of Theft, but everyone in the company has good reflexes.

"I'm not used to slow and careful," I say. "Explosives aside."

"I would think explosives would be the exact opposite of 'slow and careful', actually."

"Not when you want to keep your vessel." I slide on the sunglasses, and the room brightens. Now that's handy. "Is Adrian going to sit on all the information we need until we're on site, and say it's for security reasons?"

"Just _try_ not to antagonize him," Lanthano says, which means yes, and I don't think he gets it. I can't _not_ antagonize Adrian, except by not existing. And I don't consider my existence to be something negotiable. If I were willing to take serious risks on that--well. I would've made some different decisions long ago.

#

"Valentin," I say, in a very reasonable voice, "get off my bookcases."

They look down at me, cheek resting on an arm, and make no move towards descending. "It's not as if you were using them for anything important." The Impudite is a cascade of cream and white between the top of the bookcase line and the ceiling, and I'm not really sure how they got up there without dislodging anything on the shelves. Other things I'm not sure of: how long they've been there, how often they do this, and if they were waiting for me or just happened to be lounging across my furniture in an incidental manner when I showed up.

I don't know _why_ they've decided to lie up there, either, but why is seldom a useful question to ask about Valentin. Why? Valentin. That's the sum of it.

"Much as I'd love to debate the relative importance of literature in all our lives, I'm trying to get work done."

Valentin watches me, theatrically wide-eyed. "Is the observer effect tangling up your process again, Leo?"

"Should've brought the broom with me." I drop into the desk chair and see if my computer still boots up. The next-to-latest version of TechOS pops into existence as if--well, as if this room's resident Calabite doesn't actually stop by and use the computer very often. Zabina's already bought me my first laptop replacement back on the corporeal. Technology doesn't like me, and the feeling is mutual, whether it's the concept or the Word. "When's the last time you tangled with Lightning?"

"Are you asking for advice, or anecdotes?" Something clatters off one of the bookcases behind me. I ignore it pointedly, while Valentin's voice drifts nearer. "You would enjoy that sort of work environment, with all the explosions in your wake and the wires in the nice straight lines." They lean over my shoulder; a hand on the back of my chair makes it settle differently. "You haven't even changed your desktop wallpaper."

"Computers are for work, not for decoration." And in my case, for trying to beat the necessary email out of the newly updated program. I have to stop signing off on Artem's suggested updates every time he asks me if I want the "better" version, because the Vapulans seem to believe it's not an upgrade if they haven't changed the interface significantly.

"Luddite."

"How can you say that? I haven't destroyed a loom in months."

Valentin laughs, right in my ear, and ends up sitting on the desk next to my keyboard. "Some day the Princes will come up with perfectly automated demon replacements," they say, "and then what will we do?"

"Get rendered down to Forces." I finally beat the messages I want out of the system. "But that's what we'll do regardless, sooner or later, so I don't see a lot of profit in worrying about demonic automatons today."

"We could," Valentin says, one spotless white boot tapping against the desk drawers. Those boots may well be artifacts, because I've never seen them pick up a speck of dust. "I could pencil you in for the afternoon, and we could spend hours just worrying about demonic automatons in a variety of entertaining ways."

"The afternoon's gone, Valentin. And an evening of speculation just isn't the same." I send messages off to Yuliang and Guo for social reasons, a proper brief report to Zabina, and then it's time to figure out how to word _stop fucking with my computer setup_ to Artem so that it won't hurt his feelings.

"Evenings of speculation involve more physical contact," Valentin says, and props a boot on the arm of my chair. "Are you afraid?"

"With that many Servitors of Lightning on the other side of this job? I'd be an idiot not to be a little _concerned_ , really."

"Disingenuous," Valentin says, delighted. "It's as if you're trying to steal my lines, or maybe only my conversational patterns. Half an hour, and I'll even buy you a cup of tea."

Yet another email whisks away to someone in the company. No one told me in the recruitment speech for the company that it would involve so much _typing_ , though I probably should've guessed from all the time people spent staring at electronic devices in Seattle. "I'm not that cheap of a date."

"Yes, but I can't fetch you an entire Djinn in half an hour, so we simply have to work with what's available."

There's a knock at the door, saving me from responding to that. Valentin and Lanthano form an excellent example of how there's a lot more to people than their Band and Word, because the two of them are about as much alike as Adrian and I are. "Come in," I call, and try to figure out what a company-wide email from Captain Dio even _means_. It's something about local politics, and I'm not catching any of the references.

Adrian pushes the door open, and then stops right in the doorway, loops of intestines coiling in around himself.

I smile brightly at him around the monitor. "Can I help you with anything?"

"Do you avoid checking your messages for a particular reason?" Adrian asks. "Distraction? Spite?"

I pull out my phone, and discover that it's the source of those beeps I'd attributed to the computer. How am I supposed to track any of this stuff if the interfaces and sounds keep changing on me? "No reason," I say, as I read the actual messages. Someone at the Tether we're using is raising a fuss about timing with three grown demons dropping through, and we need to leave immediately.

"Hello, Adrian," Valentin says. They hook their boot around the arm of my chair and lie back across the desk, wings hanging off the edge and hands cupped behind their head. "You're looking well." I can only imagine what that smile looks like, upside down.

"If you're quite ready," Adrian says, "we could move along at any moment. Do take your time."

"Leo," Valentin says, "do tell Adrian that pretending he doesn't notice I'm here works much better when he doesn't have so many eyes, and perhaps mention that he ought to avoid poker games until he's worked out those little tells."

I shove the phone in my pocket, and power off the computer. If Artem "upgrades" everything again while I'm out, I'll just cope. "Turn off the light when you're done bothering my furniture, would you?" I tell Valentin, and leave them stretched across my desk as if I don't even mind.

"He doesn't need to work nearly as hard as he says he does, Leo," Valentin offers, raising their voice as I leave. "Remind him of that when he gets snippy."

I shut the door to my office fast enough that I nearly catch a piece of Adrian in the process. Possibly he's disappointed that I didn't, because it would give him something concrete to be snide at me about.

But Adrian doesn't say one word about Valentin on the hike to the Tether locus, so neither do I.


	2. In Which I Have A Productive Discussion With Coworkers

The only good thing about getting to location is that Lanthano can Charm us through the Canadian border. There is nothing positive to be said about the Tether we used or the asshole in charge of it, the car Adrian decided to drive, the fact that _he_ insisted on driving, the ban on radio play in the car, the drive itself, the conversation during the drive, the parts where no one was talking during the drive, or the final destination.

I suppose the weather was decent. There's that.

"I love safehouses," I tell Lanthano, hauling his luggage and mine from the car. "They have such a unique aesthetic."

He says nothing, but gives me a plaintive look.

"What? Adrian's out of earshot." I nudge the front door open with my foot, and toss our bags onto the ratty couch in the front room. "Some people might choose housing based on convenience of location, or outer appearances, but we know what matters: a driveway with an obscured entrance, a rear exit leading toward a complicated intersection, and enough distance from the neighbors that they can't hear what's going on inside."

"You don't even like hotels." Lanthano heaves his stack of electronics onto the table in the breakfast nook, or dining room, or whatever the hell you call that portion of the room when you're trying to sell clients on a layout like this. "It was either this or the time-share."

I sit down on the couch by our bags, because no one's going to appreciate it if I help set up the computer network. Calabite aura, mass of cables, that kind of thing. They don't mix well. I'd still rather be doing something with my hands, and Adrian's given me precious little on that front so far. "If we're this smart and this rich and this good at taking whatever we want, why the fuck don't we have any safehouses with sheets that aren't a horror?"

Adrian strides in from the back of the house. "Were you planning on spending much time in bed?" He throws the car keys to Lanthano. "Fill the tank after you finish there."

I prop my feet up on the arm of the couch, and wonder how long it'll take Adrian to give me something to do. Prediction: the instructions will be delivered with a pointed comment about the time I spent slacking off.

"You want anything while I'm out?" Lanthano asks me, while he does something to make the wifi work and not be trivially accessible to anyone who walks past the house.

Most of the necessaries are in my bags, thanks to Zabina's help in deciding what to pack, but the list has been updated since I got confirmation on the basics of our job. "Tourist guide to the city, lighter fluid, amp reader, and some kind of flashy crystal on a chain that could look like a Force catcher in the right light."

Adrian frowns at me. It doesn't sit well in the face of the host he's using. "Are you planning on setting explosives?"

"With that shopping list? Don't--" I amend, because Lanthano is making pointed gestures at me just out of Adrian's line of sight. "--think that would be particularly wise, under the circumstances. But that's a good point. Fire extinguisher."

"Try not to set anyone important on fire," Adrian says, and he's clearly gearing up for more when Lanthano starts explaining the wifi security we're using this time around. Which somehow requires authorizing every single device we want hooked to it, individually, and that's a derail of the incipient...argument? Harangue? Not a _discussion_ , when it comes to talking with that Shedite. I think I'd prefer the old-fashioned kind that's just gleefully nasty. Adrian isn't gleefully anything. He does not believe in glee.

I follow Lanthano out to the car to avoid saying anything regrettable. That's going to be my modus operandi for this whole job, isn't it? Walk away before I say something I regret. The worst of it is that I wouldn't regret _saying_ it, only the inevitable consequences, and it's increasingly difficult to convince myself that it wouldn't be worth the trouble.

"Try not to kill anyone while I'm out," Lanthano says, paused in the door of the car. The stupid SUV's halfway to a Hummer, and Adrian probably would've rented one of those if he'd had the chance.

"Have I ever? That you know of. Who I'm working with."

He gives me a look I've mostly seen him use on Yuliang, before.

"Do you give him these speeches too, or do you not bother because I'm the only one you expect to listen to reason?"

"Don't make me answer that," Lanthano says, and kisses me before he slides into the driver's seat. That's cheating.

Exactly the sort of cheating I'd expect from an Impudite, so would I hold that against him? No. But I burn through a cigarette in the overgrown front garden, watching the evening start to spread orange through the clouds, before I go back inside.

Adrian has a computer on his lap already, and doesn't look up. "You could pretend to have some focus available for the project," he says. I'm still searching for a polite answer to that one when he continues, "As you wrote the guide on Lightning facilities, I'll assume you have some knowledge in the area."

I sit down across from him. Couch and couch, with coffee table between, exactly like the setup in that Seattle condo. That makes me wonder if Lanthano and Yuliang rearranged the furniture to follow what they're comfortable with from safehouses, when they got to that place. Words have their own memetic force, beyond the explicit enforced by dissonance condition and order from a Superior. Little things. The way people sit, the types of shoes they wear, a rhythm they use when tapping a finger somewhere. It's not something we pick up consciously, by and large. You just...do things the way people around you do them, and it grows, like weeds across disused sidewalks.

"How subtle do you want?"

His gaze flicks toward me, and dismisses me just as easily. "Should I take that as a no?"

Lanthano's not here to make us play nice, and won't be for an hour yet, with the list I gave him. I sprawl into my couch and stare at Adrian directly. Whether he wants to look back at me or not. "The reason I had so much trouble in the War," I say, "is about fifty percent my fault."

"Storytime can wait, Leo."

"That fifty percent," I say, as if I didn't even hear him, "is the part where I didn't like their structure and authority system. I was, let's be honest, a whiny brat about a lot of their precious traditions. But the other fifty percent? That was because I came from an outside context, and no one gave me the inside context, because they all grew up in it. Fish in water situation. It's the unwritten rules that are going to fuck this job over, Adrian, that and random chance, and while I can't do much about random chance, _you_ can give me the unwritten rules. The ones no one in the company thinks about after a decade inside because it's as simple as walking a straight line."

Adrian's finally looking at me. That's almost like an improvement. "Would you like me to treat you like Guo?"

"No, I think you should be a damn sight nicer to him than I deserve, because the poor kid's ready to hero worship anyone who gives him the time of day. But that's beside the point." 

"There was a point," Adrian says. "I must have missed it in the middle of the long personal anecdote."

At least Valentin has an excuse for being willfully obtuse. And if I say that, Lanthano's probably coming home to someone missing a limb. "Give me some guidelines for what _results_ you want, instead of this fucking mix of micromanagement and waiting for me to guess what unspoken standard you're holding me to, because I know what happens under the current circumstances. I will get the job done, because that's what the Marquis wants. _How_ it gets done? You're supposed to be in charge of that, so take some god damn responsibility and act like a manager already."

I've spent enough time deciding to not say things I shouldn't that I can tell when someone else is running through the same process in their own head. It's a bit of a surprise; I didn't think Adrian believed in not saying what came to mind.

"Find us a way into that Lightning facility," he says, "without one breath of disturbance. In and out. Any of us three."

"Do we care if they know we've been there?" I roll my eyes right back at his expression. "Come on, you know the kind of hit and run I used to do. I'll take that as a yes. Pulling anything out?"

"Not this time."

"Right," I say, and grab a notebook from the set of supplies I packed originally. "I'll get back to you on that."

It's almost like we're a pair of competent professionals. We'll see how long that lasts.


End file.
